by S. Ann Cole
The aftershocks had scarcely left my body when Lovello whispered, “Take what you own now, baby” and yanked me down on his waiting erection …
XIV
“Don’t piss me off, Trudy. I said fifty!”
Trudy made an exaggerated moan, rubbing her hands over her stomach like a woman in labor. “My abs feel sore, Axia. I made it to thirty-nine. Can’t I just —”
“No. Eleven more.”
Tish’s laugh sounded behind me as she entered the workout room. “She’s tryna see how much she can get away with. Seeing how blasé you’ve been about everything all week.”
Trudy made a face at Tish and wordlessly resumed her sit-up reps.
It was a fresh Thursday morning and I was feeling more contented than ever. Don’t ask me why, because I wouldn’t admit that it was because of Lovello. Of course it wasn’t. The untidy bastard hasn’t slept at his own house ever since he entered mine two Saturdays ago. Without permission, he’d taken my spare key from the key rack and slipped it onto his keyring.
When I was leaving for work in the mornings, it was usually around that time that his alarm started bellowing for his daily devotion. And by the time I got back home at night, most of the time he was already there, fresh from his workout in my basement gym, and either working on his laptop or watching CNBC.
His growing pile of clothes had started eating up the space in my closet so much that I had to relocate them in the walk-in closet upstairs. His wristwatch, aviators and wallet could always be found tossed carelessly onto the kitchen counter, while the clothes he wore for the day were scattered in various parts of the house. The man was like a mini-tornado. Not even Timo made mess as much as he did. I’d leave the house spick and span in the mornings and come home in the evenings to a littered mess. Especially if he attempted at helping himself in the kitchen.
Yet for some baffling reason, I wasn’t irritated, but blithe. Everything between us felt natural, there was no awkwardness. In truth, cleaning up after him wasn’t a bother. I felt like I’d been doing it forever, as if we’d known each other all our lives. That I enjoyed him being around and all up in my space made me panic sometimes, wondering what the heck was going on with me. But for the most part, it felt right.
There was no way to understand why a young, good-looking billionaire like Lovello Nelson would prefer to be around an intemperate witch like me, rather than being single and free in his bachelor pad. But hey, I wasn’t complaining. Not at all. Not with all the crazy monkey-sex we’d been having! Just last night I was partly nude in only my bra and lace panties, bent over on my knees trying to reach for Timo’s rawhide from under the couch, when I heard the front door open and close. Lovello had gone drinking with Natalio and Trevillo, so I knew it was him returning.
Excited that he was back, I started to get up from my position but Lovello’s voice shouted at me like I’d committed a crime. “Don’t you dare move, Axia. Jesus Christ. Don’t you dare move!” And then there was the sound of keys hitting the floor, shoes skittering across the tiles, pants dropping with a mild thud, and before I knew it, my panties were yanked aside and he was inside me …
“You’re doing it again,” Trudy sang, hauling me from my pleasant thoughts.
“Doing what?”
Coming back to the present, I turned my attention back to Trudy who was sitting up on the workout mat with her hands resting casually on her knees while Tish massaged her shoulders. On a raised brow, I cocked my head to the side and nailed Tish with a what-the-hell-are-you-doing glare. She dropped her hands immediately then mumbled something about checking emails and scuttled out of the room.
Trudy watched Tish’s retreating form as she answered me. “You’re zoning out again. You’ve been doing it for the past two weeks. You get this girly look on your face and then you just zone out. Not at all like you.” When Tish was completely out of sight, she finally turned her gaze to me. “Where’s Axia? Because this person standing in front of me is an impostor.”
“I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about ‘zoning out’. I’m still me.” I raised a censorious brow at her and scolded, “You know that if you continue to allow Tish to do stuff like that, she’s only going to think you’re interested in her crazy lesbian world.”
Trudy averted her eyes to the doorway. “She knows I’m not into all that, Axia.”
“Stop encouraging her, then. Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Trudy trained her eyes on her floor, chewing on her bottom lip as she was wont to do whenever she was mulling over something in her head. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it. Opened it again, then closed it. I wished she would just spit out whatever the hell was bothering her. She shook her head slightly as if deciding against a thought, then lowered her slender frame back down on the workout mat and fixed her eyes on me. “We were talking about you. What’s up with your ‘it’s-all-good’ attitude lately? And, sweet Lord, what’s up with all those bite marks on your arms?”
A smile spread across my face as I regarded my arms. Teeth marks, some fresh, some fading, were scattered about my arms. There was nothing attractive about them to the public eye, and they should most definitely be covered up, but sometimes I got dressed in sleeveless tops, forgetting that they were there until someone asked about them. I wasn’t abashed to admit that I absolutely loved it when he bit me. But I was afraid he might eventually start biting me hard enough to leave scars. So we needed to work something out about his biting fetish. Maybe I could buy him a leather ball or something to shove in his mouth whenever he was climaxing. “Your boss bites when he comes.”
“Savage!”
I sank down to the floor beside her, lying side-by-side, arms folded behind our heads. “That he is. I thought I told you the man’s like a stallion.”
“You did.” Trudy turned her face to me, staring at me for a minute too long. A strange look swirling in the blue depths of her eyes, her cherry-red lips parted slightly. Then she laughed nervously. “I hear he’s got a frickin’ anaconda in his pants. Is it true?”
I burst out laughing. “Anaconda is quite right!” But then I frowned at a thought. “You heard that from whom?”
Trudy shifted her eyes to the ceiling. “Carla.”
“I thought you said Carla never slept with him?”
“She hasn’t. But she was there when he was banging the brains out of one of the McKel sisters a couple of weeks ago.”
“Weeks ago? When exactly?”
“On the same Tuesday he’d returned from Los Angeles.”
That was after my photo shoot. After the bike show. After he touched me. After his cold exit the Sunday morning. Hell, after he touched me. He screwed someone else after he touched me. “I thought you said he’d never left the building since his return that week. That he’d been refreshing Tellit.”
“He hadn’t. But that Tuesday he had gone straight from the airport and into a meeting with the McKels.”
“Who the hell are the McKel sisters anyway?” My voice came out a bit harsher than I wanted it to.
“Typical you to not watch the news, Axia.” Trudy rolled her eyes. “McKel Security software company? You’re not familiar with them? The building’s just a few blocks away from Coded Solutions.”
“Oh. Yeah, I know that company.”
“Well, the proprietor, Michael McKel, died of stroke a month ago. He left the company to his two clueless, materialistic daughters who don’t know their asses from their elbows. He had a nephew who’d been by his side and knows absolutely everything one needed to know about the business, staff and all. You would’ve thought he’d leave the business to his nephew, right? Nope the idiot left the business to his two imbecilic daughters, who have been running around the business in pink pencil skirts and platinum blonde hairdos with poodle puppies in Louis Vuitton bags, as they try to play boss. It’s been all over the news. Apparently all the employees have already started sending out applications to other places in preparation for the inevitab
le crash of the company.” Trudy sighed. “The smartest thing they’ve done yet is taking the advice of their father’s adviser. He advised them to ally with MEU, Lovello’s software company.” She snorted. “Nelson had been outraged by the stupidity of Michael McKel from the very beginning, and when he was approached about alliance, he merely laughed. He went into the meeting with his intimidating self and took advantage of the situation, making only one offer, and that was to buy seventy percent of their business in shares. Knowing that this meant the business would be his, the McKels’ lawyers tried to advise them against it. But the two Barbie dolls were so caught up in Lovello’s charm that they agreed, the older sister keener about it than the other. Everyone’s overjoyed about Nelson’s takeover.” Trudy laughed. “But Nelson doesn’t really give a shit about their company. Carla says he plans on selling half of his shares to McKel’s nephew and putting him in to run the business. That’s the whole reason why he bought into the company: to help the nephew. Apparently his parents died in a car accident and McKel was the only person he had left. Yet McKel left nothing for him.”
“That’s all very sweet, Trudy. And boring. Once again, you’ve dragged me through another boring business tale that I don’t give two cents about. What does all this have to do with Lovello screwing a sister?”
Trudy laughed out. “How can you be sleeping with a man high and mighty in the business world and not care to know what’s happening?”
God, was she going to tell me or not? “Trudy!”
“Okay, okay,” she said, laughing at my frustration. “It was after the meeting. Carla told me that the older sister had been all over Nelson in the meeting. Nodding in agreement to everything he said even when it was clear she had no idea what was being said. When the meeting ended, the older sister insisted that she had a word with Nelson. Of course, everybody knew what that ‘word’ would be. When everyone was filing out, Carla said she’d hurried off to the bathroom, hasting to finish so she could leave them to their ‘word having’. But it seemed the McKel sister hadn’t realized that Carla was in the bathroom, because as soon as the others were out the room, McKel attacked Nelson. Carla cracked the bathroom door to see what the hell was going on.
“Nelson had been in a shitty mood that day, she told me, and he was trying to get the girl to back off, tossing her aside and then making his way out. But the girl was shamelessly persistent, even taking out her own condom. So Nelson finally grabbed her and bent her over the conference table and began nailing her from behind like a wild ox. Carla said she’d never heard a woman scream that loud in all her life. Nelson was ruthless and the chick was all but shedding tears. On and on for around fifteen minutes without pause. Until Nelson gave a frustrated grunt and said, “Damn girl, I can’t even come“, then spun her around and pushed her head down on his cock and said, “Blow me. Maybe your mouth’s better?” Carla said —”
“Stop!” No more. I honestly couldn’t listen to any more. My head was spinning and my chest felt vacant. This was not a feeling I was familiar with. It wasn’t jealously, but something worse. It was also a feeling that I had no business feeling, because I wasn’t supposed to care whatever or whomever he did. I wasn’t supposed to care. Axia Blacksille was not supposed to care! Yet, I felt as if I’d been trampled on by an elephant.
Trudy was in a fit of laughter beside me, oblivious to the internal damage her little story had caused. “But I haven’t even got to the fun part —”
“I don’t wanna hear it, Trudy.”
“Okay, lemme just fast-forward to the end, then,” she hiccuped. “Carla said that after Nelson was done and McKel sat on her heels before him with his sperm all over her face, that she was wondering how the hell she was going to get out of the bathroom without them knowing that she’d seen everything. She said she nearly jumped out of her skin when Nelson called out, “Carla, get out of the goddamn bathroom so the woman can clean herself up!““ Trudy howled in another fit of laughter, then began sucking on her water bottle to quell her hiccups.
“Jesus, he’s horrible,” I whispered unconsciously.
“That’s Nelson for ya. It’s a good thing you’re just as much a bitch as he’s a dog.” Trudy carried on with her laughing, but when she realized that I sat inert, not a trace of humor on my face, her eyes widened. “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no!! No, Axia. No. Don’t tell me that you’re falling for him? No. Not Lovello Nelson.”
When I didn’t answer, she shot up to her feet, her eyes bulging from her head. “Axia, are you freakin’ insane? Nelson is not the kinda guy you fall for. He’s the kinda guy you screw and then piss off with! You fuck guys like him only because he’s hot and sexy and stinking rich. And what girl doesn’t want to be screwed by a hot billionaire? But falling for…” Trudy trailed off on a hefty sigh and began pacing the room. “Where’s my friend? Where’s Axia Victoria Blacksille? My strong, confident, sensible best friend? Where is she?!”
I’d never seen Trudy this worked up. It was also strange the way she was making a big deal out of nothing. Of course I wasn’t falling for the guy, I was just shocked … and disappointed … and hurt. I’d grown attached to him, yes. I’d grown used to having him around, yes. I was utterly and completely addicted to him, yes. But was I falling for him? No.
Stomaching the thought of him touching or having sex with someone else was something I couldn’t do, that’s all. When it was just a thought, I hadn’t a problem with it. He’d asked me repeatedly and I’d told him no. That I didn’t care. But now, hearing it, having a vivid picture painted before my eyes sent me into the depths of a dark, dry well. The feeling that was stabbing in my chest wasn’t one I could comprehend or name. It was awful. “Trudy, calm down. I’m not falling for anyone.”
“Like hell you’re not! Look at your face. You look as if you’ve just seen a ghost!”
Reaching for my true self, I stood up and pinned her with one of my no-nonsense glares. “Trudy, I said, calm.the.hell.down.”
She sighed and walked up to me, taking my hands in hers and bringing them to her cheeks, closing her eyes on another sigh. The woman was seriously overreacting. It was baffling. “Don’t fall in love with him, Axia. Don’t. I don’t want you to get hurt. I absolutely adore my boss, but I’d rather you go back to Zane and all his kinkiness than be with Nelson. He’s a complete dick with women.”
The man who Trudy had always been describing to me was nowhere near the man who resided in my home. Lovello was sweet with me. Tender, caring, and open about his feelings. Wasn’t closed off as if he had something to hide. Liked to cuddle, liked comfort, loved making me come. I was confounded. “Don’t worry, Trudy. I won’t.”
She dropped my hands and picked up her water bottle. “You better not. ‘Cause if you do, I guarantee I’m gonna be dragging your ass out of a shit-mire in the end.”
Even though I tried, I was unable to complete my day at work after hearing Trudy’s morbid tale. So I’d canceled my classes around three o’clock, left Tish in charge and fled the gym. I headed straight home and changed into my bikini, ran out to my backyard and dove off into the swimming pool. Swimming was one of my best ways to ease tension. Some people drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes, I swim for hours. Ask me what the hell I was tense about, and I still wouldn’t have been able to explain. All I knew was that I wasn’t myself anymore. No longer a woman. I’d become a girl. A sappier girl than I’d been with Zane.
To think I’d reconstructed myself, post-Zane, as a firm bastion, with high impenetrable walls. Never needing anyone. Never feeling for anyone. Never caring two cents about anyone but myself. But then came Mr. Lovello Nelson like a giant Wrecking Ball, breaking down my walls. Crash. Crash. Crash. Each day a piece of my wall crumbles. And I was allowing it. Unbelievably so, I was allowing it. I never objected to his gradual move in. I never objected to his taking his own key. I never objected to his browsing through my cellphone and emails. I never objected to anything he did because it felt too natural to object. Nothing about it felt wrong. Nothing ab
out him felt wrong. Everything felt right.
But reality was starting to kick in and I needed to put a cap on the lid before everything crashed in, leaving a thick cloud of dust behind that would take a while to dissipate for one to see clearly again. Feelings were not supposed to be involved in our fun. Yet they were.
Night had fallen and I was sitting in my jacuzzi, eyes closed and head back, feeling tons better than I did a few hours ago. That’s just what I needed, a few hours of slowing down. I’d been going too fast. Speeding straight ahead, disregarding all the road rules with music on high blast to drown out all rational thoughts. And now I was braking to a screeching halt.
Enough peace and placidity had seeped through my pores by then, so I was pretty sure I could face Lovello without remembering Trudy’s tale. I was back to being a woman again. A woman who didn’t care what or who her … fuck mate did. No longer a girl. Yes, that’s it, I didn’t care.
“What did I do?”
At the voice, my eyes snapped open. Lovello was standing over me at the edge of the jacuzzi, hands in pockets and looking as beautiful as always. His suit jacket and tie were missing and the cuffs of his shirt were loosened. His face was expressionless, apart from a slight frown line between his brow.
“I don’t know. What did you do?” I replied with a fake smile. The peace and tranquility I’d soaked up over the hours just leaked right back out through a huge gap that I hadn’t realized was there.
Lovello stooped down to level his eyes with mine as he dipped an idle finger in the bubbling water. “This morning I saw lamb chops in the fridge that you pre-seasoned for dinner. Been anticipating it all day. I get here, and nothing’s cooked. You always cook. Every single day. So, Axia, what did I do?”
On a scoff, I grabbed my towel and stepped out of the jacuzzi. “Dinner’s been on your mind all day and yet you’re here a heck of a lot later than usual.”